Original discussion

Article summary templates provide a place to sum up the content of the aricle. The problem is that, in my opinion, this conflicts with the text written in the first part of the articles, before the first heading, which is kind of used for the same purpose. You can see this even in the page I've linked at the beginning of the paragraph, and in Writing_Article_Introductions.
I suggest that the summary should only be written as normal text before the first heading, and that Article summary templates should be used only to provide additional schematic introductory informations, like links to related articles (also note that this could conflict with "See also" sections), using the Overview templates, listing packages to download (like in Trinity) and so on. Writing Article Overviews and Writing Article Introductions should be edited in accordance, or maybe merged with this very article? (They actually talk about style) -- Kynikos 12:12, 3 May 2011 (EDT)

I never liked those summary templates and I prefer to have all the related links either in the article itself or at the bottom in the "See also" section. The introduction should have info like This is an article about foo. If you're looking for foo2, go to this page and if you want bar, go to this page. Examples GNOME v. GNOME 3, Virtualbox v. Arch Linux VirtualBox Guest. -- Karol 13:24, 3 May 2011 (EDT)

Would you definitively deprecate Article summary templates? It would KISS things up, I could agree.

Let's try to be concrete, otherwise discussions like this can last for eternity: I'm listing all the possible uses for Article summary (add more if you can think of others), then evaluate each briefly to see if it can be put back in the "normal flow" of the article:

Article summary:

it could easily (and I think should) be always substituted by the text before the first heading (which appears before the ToC);

Overview template:

more hardly replaceable, unless we just list its links in the See also section and get rid of the rest of the description; I don't like Overview templates very much, they could also be included in the normal summary at the beginning of the article;

easily mergeable with the See also section, anyway I don't know if I would like the opposite more;

Legal info:

This is rarely used (Fonts is the only occurrence I've found with a brief random search); it could be easily integrated in the normal flow;

List of packages:

Also rarely used (Trinity is the only occurrence I can think of at the moment); it could be integrated in the normal flow, though a long list would not look as good.

...?

In the end, I would start removing the conflict for the summary itself, and then take care of the rest, also because a lot of articles make use of these templates in various ways.

As always the last word will come from the administrators. -- Kynikos 17:54, 3 May 2011 (EDT)

In my mind, the introduction should be used to describe the topic of the article whereas the summary should be used to describe the structure and scope of the article. E.g. Introduction: X is an application that turns your computer into a killer robot. Summary: This article covers installation and configuration of X. A slight distinction, I will admit. (Analogy: abstract versus introduction in research articles).

I created the overview templates as a way to add context to the related articles. Yes, article X is related to Y, but in what way? I also prefer seeing related links at the beginning rather than the end of articles.

Well I agree about the links: as we are trying to standardize the style you could consider approving to move all links from See also and External links sections to the Summary box.

About introduction and summary, I still think the difference is really too subtle to be noticed and applied in all the articles without having to puzzle over what to write where. We should think well if it really gives an advantage to have the two kind of text separated; also IMHO the purpose of the summary, as you have descripted it, is almost completely fulfilled by the Table of Contents. -- Kynikos 10:36, 5 May 2011 (EDT)

I’m not really a fan of these floating templates either. I tend to start reading a page sequentially, at least until I get a feel for what the page is about and decide if I am reading the right page or not. I ignore these sort of floating boxes because they don’t visually have a place in the main text sequence. I often just assume that if they contained important information, that information would be present in the main body as well. Perhaps I would take more notice of these templates if they were on the left (since I read from left to right), but on the other hand perhaps that would make me even more annoyed at the pages that use those templates :P.

How do the templates help add context to related articles? Vadmium 06:13, 1 August 2011 (EDT).

Is the Article Summary to be optional or required (mandatory) on every article? And if it's optional, the choice is purely based on authors' preferences or do we suggest some guidelines? -- Kynikos 07:02, 17 September 2011 (EDT)

I am neither for nor against the summary templates. The majority of users (here) are against them, so it would seem. -- pointone 14:18, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

Honestly, I would really like to deprecate every summary template except for the overviews, and I would finally implement #A crazy idea (about Summary templates, Overview templates and categories): I read it again, and my own words "This way every category would have a brief description, Overview templates would become unnecessary (merged with category pages), all (categorized) articles would have an almost automatic overview, and people would be more willing to categorize pages well" have convinced me again of the advantages of such a system. -- Kynikos 17:32, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

As a start, I suggest we move the existing overviews to their respective category pages -- I support this part of your idea. However, as for including category overviews in the article summary, what happens if a page belongs to multiple categories? -- pointone 18:21, 10 October 2011 (EDT)

Yeah I thought of that case, the article would just get multiple stacked overviews (I think it would be desirable, after all, and overviews shouldn't be 500-word texts, just brief descriptions). If however one wants to avoid displaying the overview of some categories, he can still use the normal categorization syntax.

Are we moving the existing overviews in their cat pages even if we've not yet reached a decision about the whole change?

I like having the overviews in articles. The overview gives good information for wrapping your head around a new topic and having access to the most important related articles, and I often enjoy getting this info right after reading the intro. There isn't much of a place for overview-like material elsewhere in the article either, so I'd like if these stayed. Also, many of the most related links in the summary template can be incorporated into a good overview. Emiralle 13:17, 15 October 2011 (EDT)

Don't worry, we're just discussing where to keep the source text of overviews, whether in templates or in proper categories, but in the articles the overviews will be displayed as always. -- Kynikos 13:21, 15 October 2011 (EDT)

Right. Well in that case I'm happy with them moving to category pages as well. Many categories don't have much (or any) descriptive writing so that would kill two birds with one stone. Emiralle 13:27, 15 October 2011 (EDT)

[Brainstorming mode ON]I don't even know if this could be feasible at all, but what if we could instruct the Article summary template to "read" (with an internal inclusion like those in the Beginners' Guide?) a specific standard section in each Category page that the article belongs to? That standard section would contain a description of the category, and that could somewhat replace the Overview templates. (How hard it is to explain insane ideas, further clarifications could follow)[Brainstorming mode OFF]. -- Kynikos 12:43, 3 May 2011 (EDT)

This is an example: looking at the code, I have used Template:Graphical user interface overview, but with this method its text would be in the includable section (Overview) of the Category, and would be included (automatically with some template hacking?) in the Summary template field:

This way every category would have a brief description, Overview templates would become unnecessary (merged with category pages), all (categorized) articles would have an almost automatic overview, and people would be more willing to categorize pages well. -- Kynikos 06:02, 5 May 2011 (EDT)

Ok, this definitely works: see Template:Sandbox, Category:Sandbox and Sandbox for an example (Note that Template:Sandbox has been edited meanwhile, so the examples don't work anymore at the moment. -- Kynikos 08:22, 15 May 2011 (EDT)). My suggestion would be an Article summary category template, or just Category to be put among Article summary templates; note that it automatically adds the page to the category, so it doesn't even duplicate its name in the source.

[[Category:My category]] is not needed at the top of the page. -- Kynikos 09:56, 5 May 2011 (EDT)

Of course if there's some category text that needs to be prevented from displaying in the template, it should be enclosed in <noinclude> tags (see the source of Category:Sandbox for an example). -- Kynikos 10:42, 5 May 2011 (EDT)

My original plan with respect to overviews was to include them on their related category pages (category summaries). I, too, thought of something similar, but realized that many existing categories are too broad. Consider Template:Access control overview, which includes pages under Category:Security. I also envision an "Encryption overview" which would fall under Category:Security. For this to work, we would need to split Category:Security -- not necessarily a bad thing, but I believe the template system provides more flexibility. -- pointone 20:41, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

All this idea was built on the assumption that if two articles need two different overviews, then they very likely belong to different categories (possibly in a parent-child relation) and vice versa: in your example there probably should be an Encryption category, child of Security. I still think that the flexibility given by the Overview template system has a (IMVHO too high) cost in terms of ease of use and maintenance, with respect to the category system, anyway as I said it was just brainstorming. -- Kynikos 08:58, 11 May 2011 (EDT)

See also or Related in Article Summary?

I think we'd better be coherent whether to keep links, references etc. either in a "See also" section at the bottom of the article, or in one (or more) boxes under the Article Summary at the top right of the article.

This is more a reminder than other, but I'm starting to like the idea of adding the rule to keep related ArchWiki articles in the Article Summary box only, and external links in See also sections only. Well, this way the "See also" default may even be changed (with bots, don't worry!) to a non-imperative, descriptive title like "Additional resources", "External links" or something like that. -- Kynikos 07:06, 14 December 2011 (EST)

It is likely one will read or skim the article before actively looking for additional reading material. This naturally leaves the reader at the end of the article. It is convenient for the reader in this case if links are at the end of the article. James Eder 00:29, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

It seems more common (elsewhere) to have links at the end of articles (when they are not inline with the rest of the text). Following common convention it may be better from a usability perspective. James Eder 00:29, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

Especially for people used to Wikipedia, which uses the same wiki software. Vadmium 11:12, 26 October 2011 (EDT).

I am not sure how much we care about this but it having the links at the end could be more friendly to small form factor screens and screen readers. James Eder 00:29, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

As a section, "See also" gets its own TOC entry granting easy access from near the top of the article. Alternatively one may press the END key. James Eder 00:29, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

More formatting options here than in summary. Emiralle 13:12, 15 October 2011 (EDT)

See also section would not be skipped if you start reading the main text sequentially from the top. Vadmium.

[add more advantages...]

Advantages of links in Article Summary:

Immediately visible

Beyond some minor editing inconvenience, is there any real disadvantage of having the most interesting links in both locations? It could be advantageous for the reader to have some links in both locations. James Eder 00:29, 22 September 2011 (EDT)

I think putting very closely related links in the summary gives the topic more cohesion, and as James Eder said, they could be included at the bottom as well. Emiralle 13:12, 15 October 2011 (EDT)

It would theoretically be more effective in preventing duplication of content within the wiki, as (unexperienced) editors would have a clearer view of the articles where related content could already exist (true especially with series (or "rings") of articles on the same subject). -- Kynikos (talk) 02:46, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

[add more advantages...]

Deprecation of summaries and overviews

As discussed in #Original discussion, although article summaries were intended to have a different use from introductions, this difference is really too subtle to be understood by many, and this is reflected by the fact that in the vast majority of articles, if not in all of them, article summaries are misused, especially in two ways:

they substitute or duplicate the introduction

they provide a useless summary that is already evident by looking at the table of contents

Often an article summary is added only to justify the floated box in order to add related links, just click a few times on Special:Random and see for yourself.

Second, as touched on in ArchWiki:Requests#Mention UEFI boot loaders in the overview, overviews are hard to maintain and they seem an unnecessary complication, as a link to the main "overview" article would serve the purpose much better (Boot Loaders in that example), or, if an overview article is absent, an overview could be easily added to the article itself, e.g. in the introduction. Note that overviews are used very sparingly, so they can also be seen as a non-standard feature of our articles.

This discussion, therefore, intends to plan the deprecation of both article summaries and overviews, leaving the right-floated box only for related links.

I would be very strict and only allow simple internal links in the floated box, so no alternative link anchor, no link descriptions, no external links, no subheadings... That kind of links should only be used in "See also" sections. Of course any opposing opinions will be considered.

My preference is 2B. It support [[fstab (简体中文)|fstab]] which is more clean. -- Fengchao (talk) 13:05, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Good point, I didn't think of language tags. I'd prefer using a Related template in order to discourage exotic uses of the floated box, and also because otherwise links should be separated by blank lines, or <br> tags, or listed with bullet points, all solutions that look ugly to me.

Ok, let's allow alternative anchors for Template:Related, but Template:Related_articles_start (better name than Template:Related_links_start) will have to have localized versions because I want to prevent anyone from using an alternative heading for purposes different than listing internal related articles. -- Kynikos (talk) 11:34, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

(I don't know if I'll be able to implement this before the weekend) -- Kynikos (talk) 13:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, I took an important test in Theoretical Physics today...

Note that the approach with Template:Related won't save you from unintended content - see Fonts. Though I completely support it, the additional description is really redundant, bad looking etc. Let's keep it as clean as possible.

We should also consider keeping Template:Article summary heading (under different name of course), it is appropriately used in Xorg. Though Xorg is pretty special in this case and most of the links are already linked from the article, so I won't miss it so much if it just goes away.

OK, on second thought Xorg is just an exception and can be easily changed (the right box is almost as long as the table of contents, so slimming down will only help). Let's keep it simple. -- Lahwaacz (talk) 18:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

May I propose an additional step between 4) and 5): include some modified version of Template:Out of date with fixed message and links to this discussion (or other relevant page) into Template:Article summary start in order to induce contribution of other people and speed up the transition. -- Lahwaacz (talk) 19:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, this conflicts a bit with the "no hurry" clause in 5). I wouldn't like to add an invasive note, maybe we could consider adding a superscript link like "Summary1" and/or a message in ArchWiki:News. -- Kynikos (talk) 09:43, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

We can wait a week (or longer) to see how things are going, do the problematic stuff ourselves and discover as much potential problems as possible etc., and then "invite" other people to help with the huge amount of simple stuff.

My point is that when the transition is in progress, at first sight there won't be any difference (assuming that Template:Related articles start will look the same as Template:Article summary start), only the updated pages will miss the Summary and Overview. If we add some deprecation note, then I'd expect at least some people to become involved.

I'd more like some text in the link, perhaps "SummaryDeprecated template" would be better. Anyway, this can be discussed when the time comes...

Of course some additional help for the simple cases would be very welcome; my intention would be not to confuse those readers who don't know/care what a template is (I suppose they are the vast majority), especially avoiding words like "deprecated", which may be associated to the piece of software discussed in the article.

Well, [11] speaks for everything... I also screwed up several edit summaries, copying only the text without adding brackets for the link ^^. (Actually I have an excuse for this one: for this weekend I'm stuck with really slow computer and Midori browser that does not have suggestions/completions for form entries, so I had to manually copy every single summary.)

Problems

Links to categories

1 and 2 imply that a Related link to a category displays the initial colon in the anchor.

This has some possible solutions:

Force the initial colon directly from within the template for all links, hence letting link to a Category without the initial colon. The disadvantage is that Related links will behave differently from normal links, which could create confusion among editors.

+1 for 2.2. Seems simpler than 2.1 and this way we can more easily enforce the "only for localization" policy (which would be pretty hard with the original intention ;-) ). -- Lahwaacz (talk) 12:31, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

For completeness' sake, I forgot to mention that [[:Category:Help|]] (note the final pipe) would be a valid link (and would let Template:Related have an optional second argument), but it still would behave differently from [[:Category:Help]], as the first would appear as Help (non-expected) while the second would appear as Category:Help (expected anchor).